Streetfighter swaps pitch battle for ring of fire

"I feel like I'm in prison and counting the days, crossing them off on the wall until it's Friday and I'm finally out and into a new life," Curtis Woodhouse says with a dry little laugh which echoes around the small, blue gym tucked away at the back of a house in Peterborough. It is here, on an ordinary suburban road, at the home of his thoughtful trainer, Gary De'Roux, that the former Premiership footballer turned boxer dreams his ferocious dream. If this private gym is less a jail than a place of learning, about boxing and himself, it is also obvious that Woodhouse yearns not so much for freedom than for meaning in his once chaotic but now rigorously disciplined life.

On Friday night, in the incongruously plush setting of the Grosvenor House Hotel, Woodhouse will get the chance at last to "come alive and do what I've always been meant to do" when he climbs through the ropes for his first fight as a professional boxer. It might only be a four-round welterweight bout against another novice, Dean Marcantonio, who has had just two professional fights, winning one and losing the other, but for Woodhouse it presents a life-changing shift.

"Boxing is brutal and you can get seriously damaged," the 26-year-old concedes. "But it really makes me feel alive when the stomach starts churning with nerves. It's pretty intense when someone's coming at you with the aim of taking your head off. But I love the fact it's just me against the other guy - that's much more serious than football."

If Woodhouse only skirted the heights of football, he was still good enough to play for England Under-21s and in an FA Cup final semi-final, to captain Sheffield United and to become a million-pound Premiership midfielder after signing for Birmingham City. Yet a supposedly enviable career made for an empty life. "From the outside it looked like I had the perfect lifestyle, earning lots of money, living in a five-bedroomed house, cars in the driveway. But something else burned deep down inside - and that was the desire to make something of myself as a fighter.

"It had been driving me mad for years, going to football training while wanting desperately to be doing something else. But I'd get another cheque at the end of the month and think 'I can stomach this a little longer'. I had a family to consider, and so I wasn't in a position to walk away five years ago. The only way I can explain it is by comparing it to someone working at McDonald's while doing a university course to become a doctor. It's a way of financing their dream. That's how it felt when I'd rush home from football and go straight to the boxing gym."

As his footballing drive dribbled away, Woodhouse moved from Rotherham to Peterborough to Hull to Grimsby Town. He played his last match in the League Two play-off final at the Millennium Stadium in May, when Grimsby were denied promotion by a 1-0 defeat to Cheltenham.

"I was glad to leave football after a big match even if I would've loved to help Grimsby go up. At the end the dressing room was deathly quiet and some lads were crying. Football's strange, though, because the mood of a team changes very quickly. After a shower and a few beers we had a great night together. I can't even remember what time I rolled in the next morning. That was the last time I went out on the town - and it's 12 weeks since I became a boxer."

Life was once very different. With money to burn, and glamour to boot as a local celebrity, Woodhouse enjoyed riotous spells in Sheffield and Birmingham. He is now unflinchingly honest in describing those nights of bedlam - especially when managed by Neil Warnock at Bramall Lane. "I was at my worst then, really reckless, fighting in the street three or four times a week. I'm not exaggerating - Neil will testify to that. He was always calling me in because I'd been fighting bouncers outside a club at 2am. I'd come into training with a black eye, so there was no denying it. But mad things were happening. I'm not saying I was David Beckham but I was in the public eye and some people were jealous. Because I'm only little, 5ft 7in, they'd think it would be easy to give me a pasting in the car park. It might sound brutal but I enjoyed the fighting. I was young and full of anger."

Woodhouse looks down when asked what made him so angry. He soon reveals that he was raised in Driffield, a small market town not far from Hull. "I'm pleased to say the world's changed but things were different then. We were the only black family for miles and when we walked down the street there'd be all kinds of name-calling. People would just stare or come up and touch your hair as if it was something weird. They tried to pick on us - but we'd fight them.

"As I got older I found trouble. Whenever there was something exciting going on I wanted to be in the middle of it. It was pretty normal for a tearaway off a council estate, causing mayhem. I wasn't taking anything seriously but suddenly I got this two-year apprenticeship with Sheffield at 16. It was a way out of that trouble and after a year I was in the first team with money and a career. But I really just wanted to fight."

Woodhouse's love of fighting became a matter of public record soon after Birmingham bought him. He was sentenced to 120 hours of community service for brawling in a Cardiff restaurant. "It was just after the Carling Cup final [in 2001] between Birmingham and Liverpool. I was cup-tied but after the game I went out for a meal. My friends knew the lads on the next table and an argument developed. This waiter come over and it became a comedy sketch. The waiter punched my mate in the face and all these chefs piled out from the back. It was a free-for-all."

If Woodhouse accepts responsibility for his earlier nights of violence, he is more critical of Birmingham. "They defended me in public while, behind the scenes, that was the end for me. Steve Bruce was the manager but [chief executive] Karren Brady told me she'd sack me if I was found guilty. I was only 20, and sometimes football clubs should try to help their players. I had to find my own way out of that life. I did it through boxing and when it was the first day of the season a few weeks ago it was a massive relief to be a fighter rather than a footballer."

There have been sacrifices - financially, physically and emotionally. If the most painful has been the decision to leave his family in Hull for the last three months of training, he speaks of everything else in cathartic terms. "The hardest time is between five and seven every evening which is when I usually play with my little boy and girl after tea. That gets me the most. But I'm so knackered from training that time passes quickly. I was 12½ stone as a footballer and thought I was fit and strong. But I'm now down to 10½ stone and in unbelievable condition. I think that's helped my wife. Charlotte might think I'm crackers to swap football for boxing, but she knows I want it real bad."

Boxing is a bleak and dangerous business. And until he is tested in the ring it will be impossible to know whether Woodhouse can really fight or even take a decent punch. "That question will only be answered in the ring in a proper fight. All boxers react differently when hit on the chin. I think I'll be able to take it - and it will make a change being pounded with a glove rather than a bare fist."

From such ragged beginnings Woodhouse talks passionately about his grander ambitions. And his voice rings out, solid and true, in the deserted gym. "Every boxer secretly imagines winning a world title but I can't think about that for many years. I've got a long way to go but I feel in two-and-a-half years time I'll fight for a domestic title. I'm encouraged that I'm improving every day. And at least I won't end up as one of those people who regrets not having the courage to go after what matters most to them. I'll always be able to say that, in the end, I followed my heart and became a proper fighter."